Arrested in Barcelona for paying with photocopied bills that she hid in her panties

The Mossos d’Esquadra they have arrested a 46-year-old woman and nationality Spanish for buying with counterfeit bills in shops in the Raval district of Barcelona. They consist of at least six payments with that fraudulent currency. The suspect was detained by workers from the last of the establishments she tried to entangle, who notified the Catalan police.

The woman always used 20 euro bills what was there photocopied and printed on a paper with a texture similar to that of common currency. It was, according to police sources, a forgery little elaborate that it has not required the activation of agents specialized in economic crimes to investigate whether there is behind these banknotes a group that has been able to put more units into circulation. According to all indications, the same woman had been in charge of reproducing those 20 euro notes and, despite the fact that the result was of poor quality, she had managed to buy in several stores.

The first payment that appears to the Mossos was made in a Pharmacy del Raval el December 22th. In reality, all the scams were perpetrated without leaving this neighborhood and very close to the Pedró square. He took pharmaceutical products that he paid for by handing over those bills that he had photocopied on his own. One of the pharmaceutical companies, however, realized within minutes that the 20-euro note was not authentic and took it out of the register to prevent it from becoming part of the change that was given to another customer.

On January 3, the suspect bought products in a home product decoration establishment located in the aforementioned square. Also on this occasion, the workers realized the deception when the woman had already left and, as the pharmacy did, they took the bill from the cash register and put it away. Between both payments, it is also known to the Catalan police that the woman went to three times to a supermarket from Ronda de Sant Antoni and that he took food that he paid for by delivering more photocopied tickets.

Although the woman had not caused any major stir in the commercial fabric of the area, she had become a nuisance that increasingly bothered the merchants. Several of them had suffered his scams and when yesterday Tuesday he entered a jewelery business in Plaza del Pedró, his employees they recognized and they retained her and notified the Mossos.

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A patrol went to the scene to identify her and to search her. As it is a woman, police sources emphasize, in compliance with the protocol they must also be female agents who are in charge of registering it. They did so without showing the counterfeit bills that, in theory, he used to pay. Until the police asked her to show if she was hiding something inside her panties. When looking in that place, two photocopied 20 euro bills appeared very similar to those that had been kept by both the pharmacy and the home decoration products store. “Criminals hide what they do not want the police to find in places where no one would look, and officers have to look there too,” says a spokeswoman for the police force.

The woman, who had a police record for some similar act, will go to court in the next few hours.